Germany fact of the day

…in Germany, the government is rolling out a red carpet by simplifying immigration procedures, funding free language classes, even opening “welcome centers” for newcomers looking to carve out a piece of the German dream.

In the rankings of the globe’s most prosperous countries, this economic powerhouse of 82 million has now leapfrogged Canada, Britain, Italy and Spain to become the largest destination for immigrants after the United States, according to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

It’s not just about making babies. A lot of Germans are leaving Germany (like myself), very often not even for economic or professional reasons, but just because we want to explore the world and we don’t want to be stuck in one country just we were coincidentally born there.

People moving within Europe for me almost isn’t a case of immigration anymore. When I moved between countries in the EU, it required less paperwork than a move between two cities in Germany.

Whether you need German or not for a job is left for the market to decide. For most jobs, you need to speak the language. But for many skilled jobs, English is enough. I am a contractor who moves between customers, more of them insist on English than on German, and those who insist on both are usually ok with my pretty bad German.

To put it a bit differently – global German companies use English pretty much the same way any global company does. The German Mittelstand tends to use German, as the Mittelstand tends to supply other German companies – including those global German ones.

Actually, in German terms, Der Spiegel is more or less center left – and just looking at who advertises in it should be enough to show how far left companies like Postbank, Telekom, the FAZ (which is also more left than the NYT), Bauhaus, or e-on are, right?

They have plenty of immigrants coming from within the EU, so it’s not like they can stop those. The best they can do is precisely what is described here, to try to make it easier for them to integrate, instead of creating a new set of ghettos full of Spaniards and Greek that barely know the language.

They didn’t want to have the Spanish government to make it easier for the unemployed Spaniards to get a job? Congratulations, they are now moving to Germany. The German taxpayer takes care of them anyway.

BuBa took over the BIS which formed the ECB thereafter.
The ECB/BIS has been preparing for the failure of the dollar as Global Reserve for a VERY long time.
European Central Bankers have designed a better system for final settlement of international trade. The legal and logistical framework will be ready at the time of the AQR. You’ll see it within two years.
The power is shifting from the USD//FED/IMF to EUR/ECB/BIS.

The comments over at the Washington Post tell a rather different story than what the WP (and T. Cowen) intended. Let me quote them

MaryamtheProud

Germany is welcoming educated, skilled LEGAL workers. The Spanish boyfriend of a relative worked in Germany, legally, for a time. He learned German, observed the laws of the country, and eventually returned to Spain. That’s far different than having 12 million unskilled uneducated illegal aliens, many who didn’t even complete grade school and who are functionally illiterate in their own languages as well as in English. And it’s far different than having a population that is NOT having children because of fears for their economic futures. (See the Post’s article this week on one such couple.) Before our current economic difficulties as recently as a decade ago, the US birthrate was ABOVE replacement at 2.1 even without immigration. Moreover, we have no particular need for more STEM workers as studies show there is no general shortage of native-born STEM workers.

PennyWisetheClownRedux

I truly believe that the Washington post thinks readers are stupid and will not notice that Germany is looking for and taking skilled workers not millions of mostly illiterate people who snuck across a vast mostly unguarded porous border.

EsmereldaMadelin
9:41 PM CST [Edited]
Gee, sometime back when Spain was in the first throes of its depression, I suggested in a post that if the USG wants Spanish speaking immigrants, why not advertise in Spain.

University educated with a job offer of 50K to 60K. Who would not want these people? The Libs with their “racism” attacks are just too delusional to see that allowing millions of uneducated baby factories and potential Drug Cartel members into one’s Country will eventually make one’s country just like the one they came from. This is NOT rocket Science.

And, as another Poster stated there is no citizenship or Welfare benefits granted. This is simply intelligent immigration NOT National Suicide.

Germany has a great system; why would they want to screw it up with ideas from those whose societies don’t work as well?

I believe that after many generations, the Turks have finally gotten a 1/2 Turk in the German Parliament. That is wisdom; not racism

Reading the WaPo you would never know that the most influential book on immigration in Germany was written by Thilo Sarrazin. The title of his book should tell you something “Germany Does Away With Itself”.

If one looks for published books translated into English, one also mysteriously would never know that the most influential book on immigration in Germany was written by Thilo Sarrazin. Can’t even get a digital version on Kindle. Strange in this day and age. Too bad about that.

Sarrazin has been the object of an unbelievable smear campaing by the guardians of the status quo. There is a huge gap in how the elites wish (mainly turkish) immigration to work and how it actually works out on the ground, where the real people are.

But then public discourse on kindergarden level (“he said something mean! make him stop daddy!”) is probably something
that haunts every western democracy now…

The Thilo Sarrazin Wikipedia page has all sorts of useful information. A few useful quotes

“With a view of the strong and sometimes polemical reactions against Sarrazin, some have argued that in Germany freedom of speech is being lost, as pressure to conform to political correctness is suppressing and silencing diverging opinions. Sarrazin’s views were echoed to a varying degree by notable figures of the German public sphere including German-Jewish author Ralph Giordano, industrialist Hans-Olaf Henkel, journalist and Islam critic Udo Ulfkotte and FAZ publisher Berthold Kohler.

Turkish and Islamic organizations have accused Sarrazin of racism and damaging Germany’s reputation abroad. The prominent German-Turkish sociologist and best-selling author Necla Kelek, who has defended Sarrazin, introduced him at a Berlin press conference in late August 2010 attended by roughly 300 journalists, as big a turn out as for the Chancellor Angela Merkel’s rare press appearances. Kelek said Sarrazin addressed “bitter truths” in his new book and the chattering classes have judged it without reading it.”

Of course, the real problem is that Thilo Sarrazin told the truth and the truth isn’t PC.

Because neither of those statements have anything to do with political correctness, they have to do with his laughable opinions. Sarrazin was already a laughingstock because of his 4 euro menu statements – people just kept laughing at him.

For fun I looked up some of Thilo Sarrazin’s “controversial” statements. Quote from Der Spiegel

“Sarrazin’s comments in an interview with the national Sunday newspaper Welt am Sonntag illustrate his propensity to assume that there are relevant genetic differences among ethnic groups: “All Jews share a certain gene, all Basques have certain genes that make them different from other people.” This statement is scientifically untenable, because the genetic makeup of all human beings is based on an original population of about 10,000 individuals. “All human genes already existed in this population, and these genes are found in all of today’s ethnic groups,” says Diethard Tautz, president of the German Life Sciences Association (VBIO).”

Sarrazin isn’t going to win a Nobel for his knowledge of genetics any time soon. However, he easily bests his opponents. Jewish and Basque ancestry can be trivially determined with DNA tests. If Diethard Tautz was even minimally knowledgeable (or minimally honest) he would admit the racial and ethnic groups can be easily distinguished with DNA tests.

If all humans shared the same genes (and gene variants), this wouldn’t be possible… But it is. It’s called an existence proof. Sarrazin wins, Spiegel and Tuatz lose.

Of course, there isn’t just one Jewish or Basque gene that establishes Jewish or Basque identity. Generally it’s a pattern of small variations across hundreds (or thousands) of genes. In the case of Jews and Basques, Sarrazin is perhaps closer than people might think. Very specific Y chromosome patterns are highly concentrated in the Jewish population (notably the sub-populations made up of Cohens and Levis). For Basques, blood type information suggests that they share some very specific genes. In some parts of the Basque region as much as 50% of the population has type O Rh- blood. This combination is very rare in the rest of the world.

So this guy basically says that people in need, and people born into situations that will likely leave them needy are threats… according to PA.

It’s funny, there is an honest case to be made here in the US that a battle between the *individual* makers and the takers is being waged. In the meantime, the limited resources for which this battle is being fought are deteriorating, and damage to our political process seems to be mounting. Considering one side supports our way of life, and the other, well, doesn’t for the most part, it may be reasonable, if not harsh, to label the other side a threat.

I’m not speaking in defense of Sarazin – I know nothing about him. But PA’s example doesn’t exactly point to a raging lunatic that should be dismissed out of hand.

Quite a bit, actually, though it only costs 225 euros. These include permanent residency as a prerequisite for applying, passing a citizenship and German language test, at least 7 years residency, independent support through a job/income (including all family members), no criminal convictions, and generally, the need to give up your former citizenship. However, if one is an EU citizen, there is essentially no reason to become a German citizen.

The country has had chronically subreplacement fertility since 1970. Net improvement in total fertility rates since 1979 has been nil. They fall short by about a third. This is what societies are reduced to when they cannot be bothered to bear and rear children.

Because your workforce becomes increasingly inculcated with the habits of less productive and mooching foreigners who have no stake in keeping your culture alive. The benefits of diversity evaporate quickly and you become a foreigner in your own birthplace.

And I answered him. Low fertility rates means your worker replacement favors immigrants rather than natural born citizens by sheer size of the populations alone.

Let’s suppose an 18 year old German is competing for low skill work with a 32 year old Turk. Let’s also suppose that the Turk, by reason of numerous years of experience, is better at the job and his inferior elementary and secondary schooling is not too detrimental.

In the above situation, one could say Germany is better off. However, you now have an unemployed 18 year old German with no ability to gain skills in his native land. He could move elsewhere, but that exacerbates the conversion of Germany into Turkey.

In terms of civic participation, the Turk is comparatively less interested in maintaining German culture. The Turk, with a family to support, puts a load on German quasi-public goods that our 18 year old German likely does not. The Turk and his progeny have, on average, a higher fertility rate. So you end up with a slowly dying German cultural identity and, with it, the socio-political-economic arrangement that made Germany a desirable place to emigrate to.

If you are agnostic about the evolution of cultures within arbitrarily drawn international borders, then the Turk displacing opportunity of the German is no problem.

I am not agnostic to cultural superiority and favoring status quo of culture. Mass immigration is an invasion without weapons.

There are enough abject poor people in the world who, when diffused across borders to an economic equilibrium, move every country to beggar state status. It would be better to move capital into these poor countries keeping them within their own culture. The problem is that those countries often have capital controls and corruption. The labor restrictions offset the effects of capital restrictions.

Aspects explained below. Just bracketing out questions about the comparative productivity of immigrants v. natives, ethnic fissures injure the quality of the common and can induce a politics based on dueling between competing communal groups (or, as the case is in the U.S., crooked political factions mobilizing on ethnic lines against their own cultural adversaries). Diversity is something you manage and adjust to; diversity is not strength.

It Isn’t and really only economics obsessed libertarians and the elite thing its bad. Low fertility so long as there is little immigration is good for workers since it increase wages. The thing is the elite, what Marxists call Capital and various ruling classes hate having less citizens to boss around and use for their schemes and really hate paying more wages so they invariably bring in foreigners to replace them

The sad thing is a responsive state that limits immigration , isn’t drenched in cultural Marxism and can deal with the economic repercussions of technology and trade will probably recover. Its just the toxic combination of immigration, Cultural Marxism and failure to respond to technology (for example not typically reducing hours) and trade (by becoming export dependent for example) will end up in ruin.

And Art Deco’s assertion that more available land is a bad thing is shared by the ruling classes, cheap land is wealth and power and the elite are really only elite because everyone else is below them. People in no way need to be herded into cities to be “governed:” by their “betters” People, especially rural ones can handle their own affairs quite nicely

That said the economic efficiency arguments, civic density allowing for more population and theoretically more production is accurate to a point but its still wrong headed . Culture is a lot more than population size the GDP or what crud is produced by Siemens .

Because all of us come into this world in a dependent position and most of us leave in the same circumstances. When you have 40 elderly citizens relying on 18 grandchildren for economic support and domestic labor you have a problem. There was a long-term demographic implosion in Europe from the mid 3d century to the mid 7th century. Lots more land per person at the end than at the beginning. Worked out real well for all concerned.

A typically confused American article, starting with the fact that there is a major distinction between what rights EU citizens have, including the right to live and work anywhere in the EU, and those who are not EU citizens.

I know someone who is currently a UK citizen (may soon be a Scottish citizen instead, though), who lives in France, and who manages a plant in Germany. Which in the terms used so casually in the article, makes him and his family an example of French migrant labor immigration, apparently.

He also lived for several years in the U.S., working for the same multinational. Apparently making him, and his family, American immigrants, though not migrant laborers.

And if he is transferred to another country as part of how that multinational exchanges personnel – let’s say Brasil – he and his family become Brasilian immigrants instead.

The American belief that working in another country is the same as intending to become a citizen or permanent resident of that country makes one an ‘immigrant’ is simply incorrect in the specific context of the EU.

Thankfully for those two undocumented immigrants, the incidents happened in 2011. These days, if they had any children living with them, we would probably be reading about how such undocumented immigrants were threatening the health of America’s school children by having their own children be educated in schools funded at American tax payer expense.

Why don’t you tell us about how well immigrant children are doing in Germany’s schools. The statistics show that immigrant student performance in Germany is (almost) the worst in the world. Vastly worse than the United States. Of course, perhaps you would like to discuss the murder of Hatin Surucu. At least she wasn’t killed by an ethnic German…

WHY? Who knows? The list of explanations includes all of the obvious ones; culture, genes, selection bias, discrimination, poverty, bad schools, etc. You have, no doubt, heard them all many times. However, the germane point is the immigrant under-performance is substantial, persistent, and unfix-able to date. As a consequence, it is highly appropriate for any country (including Germany and the U.S.) to restrict immigration accordingly.

Note that in a few countries immigrant children outperform (slightly) the natives. Typically Canada, Australia, and New Zealand show up in this group (it varies by test and year). Why? Because the target skilled immigrants rather than the unskilled. Note that the U.S. approach is the exact reverse. By tolerating illegal immigration (very heavily unskilled) and basing legal immigration on chain migration (family reunification) we get very low skill immigrants (on average).

Edward P. Lazear’s (CEA / Harvard Economics) paper “Mexican Assimilation in the United States” has a wealth of statistics showing the raw deal from south of the border. Summary quote.

“By almost any measure, immigrants from Mexico have performed worse and become assimilated more slowly than immigrants from other countries. Still, Mexico is a huge country, with many high ability people who could fare very well in the United States. Why have Mexicans done so badly? The answer is primarily immigration policy.”

See also “Lazear on Immigration”. Money quote

“Immigrants from Mexico do far worse when they migrate to the United States than do immigrants from other countries. Those difficulties are more a reflection of U.S. immigration policy than they are of underlying cultural differences. The following facts from the 2000 U.S. Census reveal that Mexican immigrants do not move into mainstream American society as rapidly as do other immigrants.”

Let me ask the reverse question. Why were Jewish immigrants so successful 100+ years ago? Clearly they were poor (on average) and didn’t attend (back then) elite schools. They were subject to some discrimination. Yet they were highly successful. Asian immigrants (including some quite poor Asian immigrants) were highly successful in the past and are highly successful now. They clearly encountered more discrimination than Jews. Indeed at one point Japanese-Americans were the single most successful professional group in the United States in spite of being the only group sent to internment camps in WWII.

I know someone who is currently a UK citizen (may soon be a Scottish citizen instead, though), who lives in France, and who manages a plant in Germany. Which in the terms used so casually in the article, makes him and his family an example of French migrant labor immigration, apparently. He also lived for several years in the U.S., working for the same multinational. Apparently making him, and his family, American immigrants, though not migrant laborers.And if he is transferred to another country as part of how that multinational exchanges personnel – let’s say Brasil – he and his family become Brasilian immigrants instead.

‘Why don’t you tell us about how well immigrant children are doing in Germany’s schools.’

Sure – all the ones I know have much higher abi scores than the German friends. But this is just anecdata, of course.

‘ The statistics show that immigrant student performance in Germany is (almost) the worst in the world.’

A link backing up your assertion would be nice – like this one http://www.bildungsbericht.de/daten2008/summary06.pdf Because this is considered a real problem in Germany – and has been, for more than a decade. Germany is full of problems, by the way – it is a real sociaölist hell hole, after all.

‘Of course, perhaps you would like to discuss the murder of Hatin Surucu’

“[A]ll the [immigrant children] I know have much higher abi scores than the German friends.”

Whose friends? It seems to me every Spiegel article about immigrant success stories in Germany contains some variant of the realization “As an immigrant, you have to work twice as hard as a German for similar success”. So maybe what you observe is because immigrant children with abi scores around the average of said German friends never make it far enough to get into your social circles? 😉

See, that is the problem – it depends on who you know, where you live, and whose children we are talking about.

Because the first problem, how do you count children from India? As ‘immigrants,’ though they are not German citizens? I should note that a number of the people I am referring to work for SAP, Mercedes, or Siemens – their children did equally well in American schools, for example. Which, using American terms, apparently means that they were American immigrants then.

Not every person with a ‘Migrationshintergrund’ is poor or uneducated, after all.

Hint: The immigrants who get to higher educations are not the immigrants to get the average down. Everyone knows someone who knows the child of an immigrated persian doctor (or italian artist or american economist) who is great at everything – but persian doctors are only the tiniest part of all the immigration

If you want to talk about german immigration you would need two different data sets: One for turkish immigration and one for all the other countries of origin.

You would find that the latter group has on average far better scores in school, better jobs later and less problems anywhere else too.

The idea that all immigration can be regarded as one big data blob – as if the individual wouldn’t matter – is the single most stupid thing done in all this debate.

A country that has relatively open borders when the economy is doing well and a very low birth rate does not mean the country appreciates immigrants. (Sort of the Singapore Solution) Just wait until the economy stagnates and then see if the country is still open to immigration.

Last time I looked (2012) the free languages courses only cover beginning and intermediate German. A highly qualified immigrant who knew the basics and wanted to get to level C1 or C2 (the advanced levels necessary for interaction at his or her professional level) would not be helped by what’s on offer. The result, as far as I can tell, is that Germany doesn’t really make best use of these immigrants: they may have to compete with the less-educated for jobs where basic German is enough to get by (presumably making it harder for the relatively unqualified to find employment as well as depriving German business of their higher-level skills).

As if language learning required a teacher, a classroom, and someone to officially call it a class. As if one needed permission. As if the German state(s) had to pay for those classes.

Once you have the basics in place you can easily bootstrap to a higher level on your own and then sit for the C1/C2 exams.

There’s plenty of freely available material to practice with: all the public TV stations in Germany and Austria (probably also Schwitzerland) have web sites where one can view lots of shows in German, often even with subtitles available. You can watch the news, children’s shows, cooking shows, crime shows, political talkshows — practically anything you want.

Having been a Ph.D. working in Germany, and having worked with many foreigners in the US, a few observations:

1) It is very noticeable how much less time I spent dealing with the Auslaenderamt than people spend dealing with the INS in the US. Basically, I filled out the forms according to a checklist, brought them to the office at the appointed time, and paid a small fee. The whole process literally took about 15 minutes.

2) Conducting business in English means that Germany gets access to high quality workers from Eastern Europe or North Africa/Middle East, who learn English as a foreign language.

3) Germany promotes itself as a natural place for people from smaller European countries to go when they’re seeking bigger and better things than they can find in their home countries.

4) Put it all together, and Germany has a good system for getting desirable immigrants for at least a portion of their careers. They don’t need to learn a third language, they don’t need to go far from home, the bureaucracy is relatively efficient, and there are more jobs and higher wages than nearby competitors.

Frankly, the US could stand to learn a thing or two about immigration and bureaucracy from Germany. Getting a contract done with the University of California — even as an American citizen — was a huge hassle compared to Max Planck.

I forgot to declare something 2 years back, long after declaration, the relevant form is not even in the standard drawers anymore.
I got if from the front desk lady, who successfully insisted that I can fill and file it just right there! refund one week later in the bank account.